Abstract
Powertrain of the automobile is one of the base systems and is important. It is designed to change the vehicle's drive wheel speed and torque in relation to engine speed and torque. Transmission is one of the most important clusters in vehicle's powertrain. Therefore, in the current development, many factories in Vietnam have a design and production of powertrain in general and transmission in particular. However, most of these factories still use the traditional method of calculation and design, which are backward and not keep up with modern technology. Due to that, the quality of product design is low; accuracy is not associated with the design and testing in practice. The paper shows a methodology to design and optimal calculating on some transmission parts of truck vehicle, which is one of the productions is promoted by Vietnamese government. The authors used the Catia software to design the 3-D models for transmission parts, and a Finite Element Method (FEM) model to calculate the strength of shafts. Besides, we have used the Matlab software to write a program to calculate the strength of gears in transmission. These models and program help to determine some optimal parameters, such as material, dimension of transmission parts. Therefore, the application of these programs and software is expected to improve quality of product designs of automobile manufacturers in Vietnam.
Keywords: Catia, Matlab, transmission, strength, optimal calculating